Pueblo Bonito: Chaco Culture National Historic Park, New Mexico

CHACO CULTURE NATIONAL HISTORIC PARK NEW MEXICO
PUEBLO BONITO PLEASE STAY ON TRAIL
Chaco Canyon National Monument was established by presidential proclamation in 1907, owing largely to the efforts of Edgar L. Hewett, Director of the Museum of New Mexico and the School of American Research, whose first of many expeditions into the canyon was in 1902.
Pueblo Bonito, “the pretty village,” has been known by that name since at least as far back as 1840, and was probably named by Spanish or Mexican soldiers or traders.
Excavation of Pueblo Bonito was begun in 1896 by Richard Wetherill who homesteaded in the canyon, and by George H. Pepper of the American Museum of Natural History. The work was financed by two wealthy young brothers from New York, Frederick and Talbot Hyde, who formed the Hyde Exploring Expedition for the purpose. In four seasons 190 rooms were cleaned out. Research was resumed by a joint National Geographic Society—U.S. National Museum expedition in 1921 under the direction of Neil M. Judd, who in seven summers completed the excavation of 600 or more rooms and 33 kivas, and made extensive tests in the large trash mound, and in the plaza.
Pueblo Bonito, probably the largest single prehistoric Indian building in the Southwest at the time it was constructed, represents the highest development of Anasazi architecture. Most of the construction was between the years A.D. 1030 and 1079. The bulk of the wall’s thickness was made up of rough, unshaped random stones laid in mud mortar. Then the walls were veneered, inside and out, with the carefully fitted stone you see here. The stone used for the facing, a hard, dense sandstone, was quarried from a narrow band of rock at the top of the cliff behind the pueblo. So much of this stone was used to build the great houses of the canyon that most of it has been removed for a mile east and west of Pueblo Bonito, but in other places the signs of ancient quarrying are still evident.
West end of Pueblo Bonito during excavation by Wetherill and Pepper in the 1890’s